


whatever they give you, stop drinking it down

by penrosequartz



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Ambition, Angst, Communism, Gen, Giant Robots, Gun Violence, Heavy Drinking, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Pining, Police, an OC referred to as pasty asshole, like vague adult content?, playlists linked, this is me projecting my politics onto a problematic fandom i hope u like it, use of the word "yikes"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 00:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17131199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penrosequartz/pseuds/penrosequartz
Summary: The thing about an ocean is that it’s made of drops of water - you can ignore a drop of water. You can even ignore ten. But you can’t ignore the raging, open sea, especially when you’re drowning in it.





	1. there are more important things to do.

**Author's Note:**

> hey so i have a lot of feelings about tord that are,,, unconventional to say the least. hope you like this little character study thing!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> my world split in two / i had to prove i didn't think / i didn't know / i could do it without you

[01](https://open.spotify.com/user/penrosequartz/playlist/1AhBHzjEFvYOMWM8uJCA6p?si=LtwE0EtGQZ2R45_DCbKzww)

Tord loves them all dearly, of course. It’s just that there’s so many things wrong with the world, he can’t- he can’t let people keep getting beaten down. Because they get back up again, smiling like nothing even _happened,_ and they don’t pause to think about how unfair it is, how deeply disturbing it is. Society is being brainwashed and he can’t just _sit there._

So yes, he loves them all, so very much. It’s sad, what he has to do, what they have to go through. He will do whatever he needs to in order to bring about the end of the horrific age they’re living in, whether that means leaving them or scaring them or-

He can’t kill them.

Well, okay, he _can,_ but he’s not going to.

When he fires at the house, there’s a screen, very high-tech. It tells him exactly where Tom is, a program and algorithm designed to detect and track missiles. The bullets will not hit him. They will _not_ hit him.

 _You better not stop running, fucker,_ Tord thinks, hoping with all his heart that Tom makes it out of this alive, that somehow Tom survives and Tord still manages to make this charade seem realistic.

He bombs the neighbour’s house. That’s not so much an accident as a slight lapse of judgement on his part, because one of the guys _dies,_ and fuck, Tord’s never going to forgive himself for that.

That’s not his focus. He can’t get distracted by things like this right now. There are casualties in war. There’s collateral damage. He has to stay on track, he’s so close to pulling this off…

He bites some words out about how he doesn’t need friends, and he’s lying. The problem is he simply can’t have them - collateral damage occurs on both sides of a battlefield and he can’t risk it, can’t risk them. Besides, all they would do is try to talk him out of it. Edd would hate the idea of communism, he likes cola too much. Maybe Tord could figure it out, somehow, someday. Matt would probably die if anybody even suggested him sharing- well. Anything, really.

Tom, though.

Tom, he thinks, would love it. He doesn’t know why, but he just has a feeling - somewhere down the line, they’ll patch things up, the two of them. They have to. Tord doesn’t think he’ll be able to power through this sea of troubles without the thought of Tom waiting for him on the other side.

He knows Tom’s not dead, he can see his life sign. He’s not an idiot. He doesn’t want to kill him. He wants to save him.

Because that’s what all this is about, really.

No, shit. He’s getting sidetracked again. He just has to leave. Tom is okay. Edd and Matt are okay. Their neighbour, well.

Yikes.

The punching thing hurts, but it doesn’t hurt as much as Tom yelling at him, as much as it hurts to hear the words “I am not your friend” shouted like that. Losing the robot, too, that fucking stings, _a lot_ , especially now that he can barely use the right side of his body. Tom’s a bastard. Who gave him a harpoon gun?

Tord sits on the edge of the hill and looks down through one eye, his skin burning like it has been set on fire, his replacement arm sitting in his lap. He doesn’t know how he’s not screaming in agony - maybe it’s because something else is causing him more pain than the physical wounds. Although, he’d never admit that to himself, let alone anyone else.

Paul and Patryck seem to regard him as some sort of superhuman, after that. He crams himself into the car with little more than a wince, and hisses “drive.”

They leave.

They still manage to pull it off, the whole revolution thing. It’s messy, and it hurts when Edd gets a little unhinged - surprising, actually. Tord made a bet with Patryck that it’d be Matt who cracked.

Now he’s the leader, and there are problems, but he’s dealing with them. All the while, Tom is right by his side, and yet, somehow, inexplicably, out of his reach.


	2. i hate you, and i hate that i miss you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> walk with me to the end / stare with me into the abyss / do you feel like letting go? / i wonder how far down it is

**[02](https://open.spotify.com/user/penrosequartz/playlist/19Y6V0O3CG95SgiTxvjm0P?si=IklluD7XQCO01vj8mQswLQ) **

Tord used to hate him.

Really, he did, used to hate Tom to his very core, hated the sly way the man smiled at him, hated the black holes that drilled into his skull, drawing Tord in, closer and closer.

Things changed. They got older, Tom grew better at drinking and scowling, Tord got better at lying, at hiding. He hid everything away in two boxes - **“THINGS NOBODY HAS TO KNOW,”** and **“THINGS I DON’T HAVE TO KNOW.”**

 **“THINGS NOBODY HAS TO KNOW”** was filled with plans, ideas, quotes and statistics that made him want to scream, cry, rip his own heart out of his chest. The world was unfair, and nobody could know how angry Tord really was about that, not yet. It wasn’t the right time.

But the time, nevertheless, _would_ come.

 **“THINGS I DON’T HAVE TO KNOW,”** in comparison, would never be opened. It would never be the right time to peek inside that can of worms. Somewhere, deep in his soul, under a trapdoor Tord buried beneath years of hate and bitterness, there was that box. And he knew exactly what was in it.

He tried to never think about it, and if a fleeting thought crossed his mind he would crush it down, compact it until it was so small he could just forget.

But the thing about an ocean is that it’s made of drops of water - you can ignore _one_ drop of water. You can even ignore ten. But you can’t ignore the raging, open sea, especially when you’re drowning in it.

One day the dam broke. The box flooded. The trapdoor opened.

Tord didn’t come out of his room for days, didn’t talk to anybody, and soon after, he’d left.

He’d left, and he’d spent all that time missing Tom, the man he’d hated, so much that it hurt.

During those years, as he’d been gathering support and drawing up blueprints and trying desperately to get his shit together, he’d found it hard to remember what it was like to hate Tom. Then he went back and left again, and he definitely remembers now.

He remembers what it’s like to hate Tom because he _does._

Tord hates Tom like an addict hates his drugs. He hates him and he hates that he misses him so much - he misses all of them, actually.

He’s been watching, ever since the robot thing. Been watching them all as his plans advance into their final stages, been hoping that maybe they’d try to seek him out. Occasionally he wonders if they still think he’s dead, but he hopes that’s not a possibility. He’s been on the news a lot recently, surely they can’t have missed all that.

There’s a reason Tord hates Tom viciously at the moment. It might have something to do with how much he drank, might have something to do with the fact that he’s alone in his office at the base with nothing but vodka and a monitor with a wifi connection.

Vodka always reminds him of Tom.

It’s- Tom clearly hates him, too. Tord can’t blame him, of course - he shot at him, blew up his house, killed his neighbour (mostly accidentally). He was an asshole to him for ages, mocked him, even bullied him, if he was being completely honest.

How did he ever think Tom was going to forgive him?

Whatever, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t need his forgiveness, certainly doesn’t want it now, because Tom - get this - _Tom_ , alcoholic, sarcastic bastard that he is, has joined the police force. It’s the cherry on top of a large cake of shit that’s been piling up on Tord’s plate for weeks.

What better way to get back at your “evil ex” (although Tord wouldn’t call himself “evil”, and he can’t really be an ex if they never dated) than becoming a weapon of the enemy your ex is trying to fight?

He’s talking about the state - you know, police officers as a weapon of the- you know what, never mind. He’s sad, and drunk, and lonely, and he doesn’t know what time it is, and he doesn’t care, because he’s watching Tom play some endless bassline on Susan, and half of him wants to smash that guitar, and the other half wants to listen to it lull him to sleep.

Tom’s been assigned to the unit that’s trying to track Tord down. He doesn’t know if Tom asked for that placement, doesn’t even know exactly how the police force works surrounding this particular issue. Their protocols are a bit all over the place, they don’t know how to deal with a giant-robot-building, ass-kicking communist.

God, he hates Tom, Tom hates him, he hates Tom’s stupid guitar and his stupid smile and his stupid hands and his- fuck, he’s tired, his stupid- is Tom singing? Is there sound on this monitor?

Tord flicks a couple of switches and finds the audio connection, sprawls his arms over his desk with his head on the wood, and listens to the slow hum of Tom’s nonsense lyrics as they lead him into sleep.

He might hate Tom now, but the only person he’ll hate in the morning is himself.


	3. you're being brainwashed.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i don't believe whatever this is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just thought i'd tell you that i don't agree with everything tord does and says in this - like, he definitely does some crazy shit. he's not in the right. i'm just telling this from his point of view.  
> (also, these aren't entirely in chronological order, if you haven't noticed yet. like, mostly, but not entirely).

[03](https://open.spotify.com/user/penrosequartz/playlist/3qaq0z8i7HO2Kk0EYyvjWq?si=ASzhUuzwRMqxm1qwuBFlBQ)

Tord’s drinking again, although he shouldn’t be - he’s got a meeting with a few young people tomorrow who aren’t easily impressed, and he would really, _really_ like to impress them.

He’s been watching Tom recently, not because he’s a dumb pining idiot, but because Tom has become dangerously close to tracking down their weapons suppliers.

(He _is_ a dumb pining idiot, he hates that, and he hates Tom, but he doesn’t really hate him. Sort of like “I hate you, but I’d make out with you if I could,” you know?).

If Tom manages to track down their suppliers, that doesn’t necessarily mean immediate disaster. Tord likes to think he’s pretty good at planning things out, even if certain people do cause him to act irrationally, and thus become unknown factors of sorts. Naturally, there are contingency plans so everything didn’t go completely haywire.

Most of those contingency plans rely on Tord’s suppliers’ abilities to keep their mouths shut.

Tord likes guns. He’s not ashamed to admit it. He likes the weight of something dangerous in his hands, likes the feeling of being able to aim well, likes the way he’s allowed to brag a little - because guns like him, too, he’s good with them, takes care of them, uses them with precision and a little bit of flair, if he does say so himself. One thing Tord doesn’t like about guns is that they’re very easy to kill innocent people with.

He still hasn’t forgiven himself for Jon. That dopey guy probably never did anything wrong in his life, and Tord took the rest of it away without so much as an apology.

He can feel his resolve slipping, if only slightly.

He tells himself it’s a war. He tries to avoid as little- _collateral damage_ as he can, tries to make sure everyday people don’t get caught in the crossfire. Yet it’s everyday people who let their closed minds get in the way of his upending of the status quo, news anchors and parents and nurses, and he wants to scream at them all, _“I’m doing this for you! Don’t you see that?”_

Sometimes he thinks maybe he’s not going about this the right way.

Then he thinks back to the people who came before him, the ones who campaigned for reform and for peaceful protests and he remembers hoping, hoping so hard that they would succeed.

And then they just… didn’t.

Tord glares at the pictures of company CEOs on his monitor, reads their salaries and then reads the salaries of their lowest-paid workers, and feels his anger, coiling in his stomach. He can do this. He’ll do whatever he needs to.

Tom may be a police officer, being steadily brainwashed by this unbelievably evil system, but Tord’s going to save him. He’s going to save them all, even though- well, they don’t know they need saving, which makes everything difficult.

He puts a smile on for the teenagers who want to join his cause, explains his points of view to them. They seem pretty solid, ready to flip some tables, or the scales, at least - he sends them with Patryck so they can eat something that’s actually vaguely nutritious.

God, when did he become such a mother hen? Jesus.

Tom gets closer and closer and closer to finding real evidence, he doesn’t know _how,_ but he does know the prick has always been smarter than he lets on. Tord knows everybody at the base expects him to take some kind of action, whether it be Tom having a little “accident” that gets him out of the force, or being taken _out_ of the action - for good. He doesn’t say anything. He dreads the idea of having to do anything like that ever again.

He still remembers what it’s like to hate Tom, remembers that he used to be a violent little asshole in the name of covering his tracks. But the thought of hurting Tom makes him sick to his stomach, now, and he can’t say why.

(He can, but he won’t).

So yes, Tom gets close. He gets closer than any detective or police chief or politician or PI or investigative journalist.

After that, he drops off the map.

Tord doesn’t know where he went - he could find him, if he really wanted, but that would mean diverting resources and people away from important tasks, and he can’t afford to do that right now. Things are really heating up.

Edd’s in the same place, Matt’s still staring at himself in the mirror. They don’t seem to be… _looking_ for Tom, as far as Tord’s seen, so they must know something he doesn’t.

To be fair, Tord hasn’t really seen much - he’s had other things on his mind, been throwing himself into designing things and making plans and discussing ideas. Designing an entirely new system of government is quite challenging, honestly.

Tord hasn’t been seeing much, until he sees Tom on one of the security cameras outside the base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i kind of... beta myself after i upload? so sorry if you're reading this like three seconds after i post it lol


	4. it's my fault, please forgive me, also, i'm sorry, also, i love you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> speed up to the precipice / and then slam on the breaks / some people crash two or three times / and then learn from their mistakes / but we are the ones / who don't slow down at all / and there's nobody there / to catch us when we fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i never meant for this to be... like, long? so sorry if you wanted it to be more detailed and have more dialogue ///

[04](https://open.spotify.com/user/penrosequartz/playlist/4xNO0hIon8Ux0tebGsD4vR?si=pkFHSS0AR9Gja_ONl0v-Pw)

Tom is here to stay, apparently.

He’s not- they’re not really _talking,_ just nodding at each other occasionally, a “pass the salt” kind of relationship. A professional relationship, that is, not- you know what he means.

God, Tord thought it would be easy. He’s such an idiot. He thought if Tom could see what he was doing, could see that it was… the best thing to do, then he’d forgive him. And everything would be okay.

The problem is that Tom _does_ see that Tord has a point, he _knows_ that this is the right thing to be doing, and he _still_ hates him.

And Tord knows that he _should_ hate him, because everything Tord has ever done to Tom has been… just, bad. Terrible. Violent, horrible, evil, and he can’t believe he was ever that person, he can’t believe that the man he sees in the mirror used to be like that - and still, that’s no excuse.

All Tord can do is think _sorry_ whenever he locks eyes with Tom. He’s almost nostalgic, missing Tom in a way that doesn’t make any sense. How can you miss somebody that you never had?

He asks this question to Paul, trying valiantly not to drop any hints about who, specifically, he’s talking about.

“This is about Tom, right?” The man replies immediately, and Tord puts his head in his hands with a groan.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Paul sighs, “Listen, you- you miss what you used to have.”

“But what we used to have was _terrible,”_ Tord says.

“You still miss his company,” Paul pats him on the back, “Like, you miss having a bookshelf because books are important, even though all the books you ever had on that shelf were trashy romance novels and bad horror fiction.”

“That’s…” Tord shakes his head slightly, “That’s such a bad metaphor, how did you even come up with that?”

Paul shrugs.

All of this is building inside him, guilt and hate and fear and tension, and Tord is pushing himself to breaking point. He knows there’s only a matter of time before he shatters all over the floor. He doesn’t want to seem overly cold-hearted, but he can’t afford attachments like this with what he’s trying to do - it’s physically impossible for him to keep going.

But he does. And he will. There’s no way he can do this but there’s no way he can’t, because dropping either of these… _infatuations_ just isn’t an option. He can’t let go of his superobjective - some would say world domination, he’d prefer global rearrangement - and he can’t let go of Tom, because he- well, he can’t.

Seriously, he’s tried.

He’s so sorry. He’s never going to make it. Their promises are going to die like a match struck in the dark, blown out by the wind before it could ever get the fire started. Tord is glad, though, that if they are wiped out, that he managed to catch a glimpse of colour in the endless grey.

Still he pushes onwards, unwilling to entirely give in.

Tord has a lot of nerve showing up in front of Tom’s room like this.

He knows where it is, of course he does. The base is big, but it’s not _that_ big. He walks past the door sometimes, usually because he actually has to, and occasionally because he wants to hate himself a bit more. It’s a hobby.

Fuck, apologising has never been this hard. He stumbles over his words, and Tom narrows his eyes at him like he’s trying to tell if Tord is lying, if this whole thing is some elaborate practical joke.

“You- this is fucking bullshit,” Tom scowls, “You can’t just _say_ that.”

He slams the door in Tord’s face, and Tord absolutely deserves it.

Well, he’s glad the whole confession thing is over and done. Maybe he’ll get over this whole crush thing now.

He doesn’t. If anything, it gets worse. Tord has made some huge fucking mistakes in his life, but this has got to be the biggest of them all (... fine, at least top three). Tom doesn’t talk to him, avoids him, ignores him, and all Tord does is feel that harpoon as if it was sticking through his heart.

Well, feel the pain and try to lead an army at the same time, which he’s actually doing reasonably competently, so. Fuck you, I guess.


	5. i hate you, but i kind of love it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> take your foot off the brake / for christ's sake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok this one has WAY more dialogue oops

[05](https://open.spotify.com/user/penrosequartz/playlist/76B012uRHbxV9lQeFm5q1a?si=kKeVpvF8R2y65-ubrg7BYg)

_Things_ happen.

Drunk Tord is stupid and Drunk Tom is even _more_ stupid, and when they stumble into Tord’s room at one in the morning neither of them are really thinking straight (ha, ha). Tom is mumbling a lot of things and something is the back of Tord’s brain is saying that he really should be listening, because they need to talk about this, but he’s not. Of course he’s not.

Drunk Tord is irritating as all hell.

They don’t talk about it in the morning. Tord doesn’t remember most of what happened and by the look of it, neither does Tom. So Tom goes back to ignoring him, but it seems… different, somehow. Uncertain. Even a little worried.

This stresses Tord out for some reason. He doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on, and above all else, he really hates the feeling that people are lying to him.

There’s some kind of shift that happens when Tom (who’s a bit like their inside man at the moment) needs to get information, and he needs somebody to help him. Tord doesn’t trust anyone else to do this right, not even because it’s Tom (and he’s not lying this time), but because the intelligence they’d get from this would be invaluable.

Which brings him to the fact that he’s kind of… riding shotgun in a cop car. With Tom driving. Which is weird.

Tord hates cops, seriously, but he won’t deny that Tom does look kind of hot in his uniform.

 _God,_ he really needs to keep his brain in order, he can’t be thinking stuff like that when he’s about to grab something that will turn the tide in this fight. Tom says something, but Tord’s busy steam-cleaning his mind.

“What, sorry?” He asks.

Tom snarls, taking a left, “I _said_ I joined the force because of you.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that,” Tord purses his lips, glances out the window at the cars parked along the afternoon suburban street. There’s children playing in yards and an old woman painting as she sits in her yard. Better things are coming, he knows.

“Not because I wanted to hunt you down- well, I did,” Tom sighs, “But I didn’t want to turn you in. I just wanted to find you.”

Tord frowns.

“So, what? You wanted to come and get your revenge for every fucked up thing I ever did to you?” Tord asks.

“No, I wanted to hear you apologise,” Tom replies.

“I did apologise,” Tord mumbles.

“And you said a whole heap of other shit, too!” Tom looks like he’s resisting the urge to throw his hands up in exasperation. Tord sincerely hopes he keeps them on the wheel.

“Sorry?” Tord tries, weakly.

“You don’t remember, do you?” Tom says after a beat, voice low.

“Remember what?” Tord asks. There’s probably an awful lot of things Tord doesn’t remember.

“What I said to you the other night,” Tom slows down as they approach the traffic lights. Something sparks at the back of Tord’s mind.

“Not really, no,” he admits, “To be fair, I was a little distracted at the time.”

Tom goes a little pink. Tord can’t believe this is his life. Did he really sleep with the guy he has huge emotional issues over and then get in a car with him to go help win a war?

Tom sighs.

“We can talk about this later,” he says, and Tord notices how white his knuckles are over the steering wheel.

The guy has the information, but he also has a backup crew of about six people, which is just great. They all have guns, and they are all shooting at Tord. Tom manages to get back to the cruiser and grab his state-mandated firearm, takes out all six of the fucking seven-foot guys this weedy, pasty asshole brought with him. Tord gets the USB off said weedy, pasty asshole and hauls ass just as more cops pull up.

He and Tom and pasty asshole are just fucking running, man. Tord is supposed to be the leader of an unstoppable revolution, but the cruiser is back where the cops are swarming, so his feet are pounding the ground as pasty asshole begs for forgiveness a few steps behind him, crying that he just wanted some protection in case things went south, he didn’t know they were working for someone else-

“Can you shut the fuck up?” Tord growls, “Do you have a car?”

“I- it’s back where-” pasty asshole starts.

Tom grabs his glock out of his holster and shoots the driver’s side window of a nearby car, unlocks the door, and jumps in. Pasty asshole goes for shotgun as Tom starts to hotwire the- what is it, a Nissan?

“I don’t think so,” Tord scowls, shoving Mr. Pasty to the backseat door.

They manage to get at least halfway to the base before a siren starts blaring behind them.

“Pull over,” Tord huffs.

“Are you kidding?” Tom asks, incredulously, “I’m in uniform. He probably knows me.”

“Pull. Over,” Tord insists, “And give me your gun, please.”

Tom freezes, slowing the car down.

“You’re not gonna-”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Tord hisses, “Just trust me, and give me your gun.”

“Trust you,” Tom laughs dryly, but he hands the glock over anyway.

The cop gets out of the car and walks towards them, and Tord takes out both the front wheels on the guy’s patrol vehicle, then urges Tom to get going.

He’s a good shot, right?

He pretends to blow the smoke from the barrel, and Tom whacks him in the shoulder.

Later, there’s a sharp knock on Tord’s door, and they actually talk for a while, like normal people do when they’re trying to sort out issues. There’s something about alcoholism and hating each other, and then there’s several apologies and talking about being a changed man, and then there’s something about Tom being Tord’s knight in shining armour while ironically taking the bad guys out with the state’s gun, and something about Tom looking good as a cop, and, well. You can guess what happens after that.

When Matt shows up, things really kick off. And after that, when Tord accidentally invents time travel, well that’s even more fun.

Things might work out after all.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos + comments are greatly appreciated!


End file.
